Working groups require considerable care and feeding. In addition to general participation, successful working groups benefit from the efforts of participants filling specific functional roles.
5.1. WG Chair
The Working Group Chair is concerned with making forward progress through a fair and open process, and has wide discretion in the
conduct of WG business. The Chair must ensure that a number of tasks are performed, either directly or by others assigned to the tasks.
This encompasses at the very least the following:
Ensure WG process and content management
The Chair has ultimate responsibility for ensuring that a working group achieves forward progress and meets its milestones. For some working groups, this can be
accomplished by having the Chair perform all related activities. In other working groups -- particularly those with large or divisive participation -- it is helpful to allocate process and/or secretarial functions to other participants. Process management pertains strictly to the style of working group interaction and not to its content.
It ensures fairness and detects redundancy. The secretarial function encompasses document editing. It is quite common for a working group to assign the task of specification Editor to one or two participants. Often, they also are part of the design team, described below.
Moderate the WG email list
The Chair should attempt to ensure that the discussions on this list are relevant and that they converge to consensus agreements. The Chair should make sure that discussions on the list are summarized and that the outcome is well
documented (to avoid repetition). The Chair also may choose to schedule organized on-line "sessions" with agenda and deliverables. These are structured as true meetings, conducted over the course of several days (to allow participation across the Internet.) Participants are expected to allocate time to the meeting, usually in the range of 1-2 hours per day of the "meeting".
Organize, prepare and chair face-to-face & on-line formal sessions The Chair should plan and announce sessions well in advance.
(See section on Session Planning for exact procedures.) Communicate results of sessions
The Chair and/or Secretary must ensure that minutes of a session are taken and that an attendance list is circulated.
See the section on Session Documents for detailed procedures.
Immediately after a session, the WG Chair must immediately provide the Area Director with a very short report
(approximately one paragraph, via email) on the session.
This is used in an Area Report as presented in the Proceedings of each IETF meeting.
Distribute the work
Of course each WG will have participants who may not be able (or want) to do any work at all. Most of the time the bulk of the work is done by a few dedicated participants. It is the task of the Chair to motivate enough experts to allow for a fair distribution of the workload.
Document development
Working groups produce documents and documents need authors.
The Chair will make sure that authors of WG documents
incorporate changes as discussed by the WG. See the section on Session Documents for details procedures.
Document publication
The Chair and/or Secretary will work with the RFC Editor to ensure document conformance with RFC publication
requirements and to coordinate any editorial changes
suggested by the RFC Editor. A particular concern is that all participants are working from the same version of a document at the same time.
5.2. WG Editor/Secretary
Taking minutes and editing working group documents often is performed by a specifically-designated participant or set of participants. In this role, the Editor’s job is to record WG decisions, rather than to perform basic specification.
5.3. WG Facilitator
When meetings tend to become distracted or divisive, it often is helpful to assign the task of "process management" to one
participant. Their job is to oversee the nature, rather than the content, of participant interactions. That is, they attend to the style of the discussion and to the schedule of the agenda, rather than making direct technical contributions themselves.
5.4. Design teams
The majority of the detailed specification effort within a working group may be done by self-selecting sub-groups, called design teams, with the (implicit or explicit) approval of the working group. The team may hold closed sessions for conducting portions of the
specification effort. In some cases design teams are necessary to make forward progress when preparing a document. All work conducted by a design team must be available for review by all working group participants and the design team must be responsive to the direction of the working group’s consensus.
5.5. Area Consultant
At the discretion of the AD, a Consultant may be assigned to a working group. Consultants are senior participants in the IETF community. They have technical background appropriate to the WG and experience in Internet architecture and IETF process.
5.6. Area Director
Area Directors are responsible for ensuring that working groups in their area produce coherent, coordinated, architecturally consistent and timely output as a contribution to the overall results of the IETF. This very general description encompasses at the very least these detailed tasks related to working groups:
Area planning
The Area Director determines activities appropriate to the area. This may include initiating working groups directly, rather than waiting for proposals from IETF participants.
Coordination of WGs
The Area Director coordinates the work done by the various WGs within (and sometimes even outside) the relevant area.
IETF Meeting Schedule
The Director tries to coordinate sessions in such a way that experts can attend the relevant sessions with a minimum of overlap and gaps between sessions. (See section on WG sessions for details.)
Reporting
The Area Director reports to the IETF on progress in the area.
Reviewing
The Area Director may appoint independent reviewers prior to document approval. The Area Director tracks the progress of documents from the area through the IESG review process, and report back on this to the WG Chair(s).
Progress tracking
The Area Director tracks and manages the progress of the various WGs with the aid of a regular status report on documents and milestones that is generated by the IESG Secretary. The Area Director forwards this report to the WG chairs. This in turn helps the chairs to manage their WGs.
5.7. Area Directorate
An area directorate consists of senior members of the technical community and are appointed by the Area Director who then tasks them with technical oversight and review of specific area activities. An Area Director chairs the directorate. At the request of the AD, directorate members conduct specification reviews and may be assigned as Area Consultants, to provide architectural assistance.
6. WORKING GROUP DOCUMENTS